CultureShock! South Africa. A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette

In 1904, when the country needed additional labour for post-war reconstruction, many thousands of Chinese labourers were recruited for this and also to work on the gold mines.

150,000 Indians

Today the majority of the million-strong Indian population still lives in Durban and other areas of KwaZulu-Natal.

In the mid-19th century, the European sugar cane planters needed labour skilled in this area of agriculture, so they recruited workers from the Indian subcontinent

Not all the Indian immigrants were labourers. Some of higher caste came on their own as traders and merchants.

Natal Indian Congress (NIC) in 1894

In 1893, Mahatma Gandhi was thrown out of a train in South Africa because he refused to move out of a ‘whites-only’ compartment. He had come to South Africa to defend a court case but ended up spending 20 years in the country, being a key figure in the Indian protest movement.

July 1985, the then State President P W Botha declared a state of emergency, saying the country was ungovernable

18.8 per cent of the population between the ages of 15 and 49 years old is infecte

The collapse of the dictatorship in Portugal to the left-wing in 1974, led to her pulling out of Africa with major implications for her colonies, especially Mozambique and Angola.